Jonah's 4 yr checkup!

    Jonah had his 4 year check up today (I'm definitely a little late, but it's not my fault, I promise...we were scheduling it right as Sadler Clinic was shutting down and then we went to Florida for a month, so we're just now getting to it). Our doctor is wonderful. He is a family practitioner, so we all see him. He plays with Jonah and makes himself completely available for us with him and is also proactive in taking care of Jason and I. He is not a fan of overmedication and strives to really use as little as possible. Jonah really likes him and responds really well to him (except when he's getting shots, and then he's really mad at everyone).
 
    Jonah is in the 88% for height and the 55% for weight, which is not surprising at all. I'm pretty tall, Jason's not short, and both of our dads are over 6 foot tall. The weight is a little lower then the height because of the controlled diet he is on, but he's had a 20 point spread at least in those numbers for as long as I can remember. He is doing great developmentally and passed his vision screening with flying colors...he was good enough with his letters that he could use the big boy chart instead of the picture chart.

    The really exciting thing about the whole appointment was how excited our Dr. was about how much better his skin and constant nose drip were. He was pretty confident this is the first time he's ever seen Jonah w/out a runny nose and black circles around his eyes. Even with the bad flare up last week w/his eczema, he still looked better then he has in the past and we're medicating him substantially less. His tubes in his ears looked wonderful and had no draining or wax build up or swelling. The Dr. was so amazed at how much of a change diet has made in both Jonah and I (he hasn't seen Jason yet, but I'm sure that will be impressive too).

  Jonah still has the heart murmur, but we're going to leave well enough alone with that one for another year and see how it sounds next year. We'll keep a close eye on it this year since he is starting competitive (as competitive as 4,5, and 6 yr old t-ball is) sports in a few weeks and will be playing most of the year, it should give us a pretty good indicator of if it's problematic or not. He did say at this point, it'll probably be a permanent murmur and could still be non-problematic for the rest of his life.

    We did survive the shots...barely. We are still playing catch up from delaying some of his vaccines and spreading them out until he was older so even though he had gotten some of his 4 yr old shots in January, he still got 4 today. We could've waited another 6 months to do the other 2, but I decided to go ahead and do them today because he hates them so much and is big enough to tell me when something feels funny. It took 3 full grown adults to give him his shots, the doctor sprayed his leg w/some numbing spray and then the nurse gave him his shots while I held onto him. He actually sat up to do them and didn't try and grab them or anything, so I think he probably could've done without me holding his hands, but I was probably the only one he actually wanted involved. He didn't even feel the first 3, because he was telling the nurse that he didn't want her to give him shots, but the last one is the chicken pox shot, and I've had that one as an adult and it is the most painful shot I remember getting. Before he left he gave both the nurse and the Dr. hugs so I'm thinking all is forgiven. He was so mad though that he was talking to me in a screaming cry all the way into the parking lot. He got in the car, took off his bandaids and told me it felt all better now. He's a bit dramatic, I think. So all of that to say, all is well in the world of Jonah :-) He's growing and developing without any problems and the biggest problem we did have is improving slowly but surely.